When I noticed on the front page of this Morning’s Sunday Telegraph that His Grace the Archbishop of Westminster had been attacking the government over the attempts to reduce the massive deficit inherited from the profligate Labour government, and doing it in the name of Catholics (it appeared) the above expression leapt into the forefront of my mind.
His Grace is speaking for himself from the 1980s-style intellectual comfort zone into which he has evidently retreated since last May. In the 1980s some Catholics, notably members of an organisation called Pax Christi took the ‘anti-Thatcherite’ view that high government spending was a morally laudable thing in itself. I was then, and I am now, on the side of the Good Samaritan, who, seeing the man wounded and robbed by the roadside, took action himself to alleviate his suffering out of his own pocket. No doubt the priests and Levites who walked by on the other side of the road complained compassionately to the authorities about the risks now involved in travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho and demanded that ‘they’ take action but did not help the man one whit themselves.
His Grace has achieved one thing. He has put me and Francis Maude on the same side for once!
However, I read that there is a plan afoot in Cameroon circles to give Clegg a boost following the victory of the ‘No’ vote on 5th May and expected Lib Dem losses in the local elections by letting him have PR for an elected House of Lords. If this is so, I hope they don’t think they’re speaking for Conservatives. There are seriously more important things in the minds of real Tories than House of Lords ‘reform’, and to waste so much time and effort on it as would necessarily be involved in order to appease the Lib Dem Left would be, in my opinion, grotesquely irresponsible.
Forget it Dave!
PaulJ's bench.......... 